Yes, where did it come from? I join the Prime Min­is­ter in ques­tion­ing where the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) gets the idea to re­quire re­turn­ing of­fi­cers (in pub­lic elec­tions) to de­clare their par­ty mem­ber­ship.

The EBC chair, Mark Ramk­er­rysingh, from whom the re­quire­ment pur­port­ed­ly came, has since sought to clar­i­fy that he didn’t mean that re­turn­ing of­fi­cers should re­veal which par­ty they be­long to but rather (and sim­ply?) whether they be­long to a par­ty.

So Dr Row­ley was opin­ing on a mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion. That opin­ion is that it is ab­solute­ly un­ac­cept­able for the EBC to ‘ques­tion EBC staff about their vote.’

Now, I don’t know that the EBC chair used the terms found in the quo­ta­tion above; what I know is that he was re­fer­ring to re­turn­ing of­fi­cers and their par­ty af­fil­i­a­tion. If that is the case, then Dr Row­ley was giv­ing us his in­ter­pre­ta­tion of what Ramk­er­rysingh said. The Prime Min­is­ter of the coun­try was say­ing that the EBC was seek­ing to know what par­ty re­turn­ing of­fi­cers and oth­er staff would vote for, which is ab­solute­ly none of their busi­ness. And I ab­solute­ly agree.

But Ramk­er­rysingh clar­i­fies that he was not re­fer­ring to the po­lit­i­cal al­le­giance of the re­turn­ing of­fi­cers but to whether they had any at all. This is a head-scratch­ing state­ment. What’s the point of the of­fi­cers telling him whether they be­long to a par­ty with­out nam­ing that par­ty???

Row­ley ob­vi­ous­ly thinks, and right­ly so, that there is no dif­fer­ence to be made be­tween the two re­quire­ments. In his post on the mat­ter, he goes on to say the fol­low­ing: ‘The vote in this coun­try is se­cret and no per­son in pub­lic em­ploy­ment must be forced to re­veal how he or she vot­ed or in­tend (sic) to vote.’ And then, don­ning his au­thor­i­tar­i­an hat, he goes on to di­rect­ly con­tra­dict the EBC chair and in­struct re­turn­ing of­fi­cers to de­fy him: ‘Re­turn­ing of­fi­cers are not to com­ply with this strange and dis­turb­ing de­vel­op­ment at the EBC.

The PNM (he by per­son­i­fi­ca­tion?), which has not been con­sult­ed on this mat­ter, is res­olute­ly op­posed to this un­nec­es­sary and pos­si­bly il­le­gal ac­tion.’

You might ask, Grounds for the EBC chair to re­sign?

Ramk­er­rysingh ex­plains, but with bare­ly an ar­gu­ment, that the EBC has re­ceived al­le­ga­tions and con­cerns about re­turn­ing of­fi­cers be­ing mem­bers of po­lit­i­cal par­ties and that to ‘ad­dress these con­cerns and safe­guard the in­tegri­ty of the po­lit­i­cal process, the com­mis­sion sought le­gal ad­vice on re­quir­ing ap­pli­cants for the po­si­tion of re­turn­ing of­fi­cers to de­clare whether they are a mem­ber (sic) of a po­lit­i­cal par­ty.’

Since the le­gal ad­vice would nec­es­sar­i­ly ad­vert to the al­le­ga­tions and con­cerns, you would think the EBC would have re­galed us with spec­i­fi­ca­tions, but they have cho­sen not to.

The EBC goes on: ‘The le­gal opin­ion con­firmed that such an in­quiry is both ad­vis­able and law­ful. It dis­tin­guish­es be­tween de­clar­ing whether one is a mem­ber of a po­lit­i­cal par­ty and dis­clos­ing vot­er pref­er­ences, which is pro­tect­ed by the prin­ci­ple of se­cret bal­lot. Mem­ber­ship in a po­lit­i­cal par­ty im­plies a lev­el of al­le­giance or af­fil­i­a­tion that could po­ten­tial­ly cre­ate the per­cep­tion of bias or ap­par­ent bias … .

‘Re­quir­ing ap­pli­cants to de­clare their mem­ber­ship is a proac­tive step to mit­i­gate po­ten­tial con­flicts of in­ter­est and main­tain pub­lic con­fi­dence in the elec­toral sys­tem.’

The opin­ion is un­for­tu­nate­ly di­dac­tic. It tells the re­turn­ing of­fi­cer that not dis­clos­ing the par­ty they sup­port is pro­tect­ed by law but that re­veal­ing whether or not they be­long to a par­ty with­out nam­ing the par­ty is not.

But where is this com­ing from? Is the EBC say­ing that this pearl of wis­dom comes from se­nior coun­sel? If a re­turn­ing of­fi­cer re­fus­es to say whether they be­long to a par­ty, how would the EBC or se­nior coun­sel know? Can they use the law to co­erce the of­fi­cer? And if they can’t, what is their next re­course? Ramk­er­rysingh is on record as hav­ing said that if a re­turn­ing of­fi­cer is found to be an ac­tivist, they are re­moved. But what does he mean? Is he recog­nis­ing a dif­fer­ence be­tween be­hav­ing like an ac­tivist on elec­tion day (or any oth­er day, for that mat­ter) and not be­hav­ing like one? Is it le­gal to ‘re­move’ a re­turn­ing of­fi­cer if they don’t tell you if they be­long to a par­ty? Is be­long­ing to a(n) un­named par­ty a cri­te­ri­on for be­com­ing a re­turn­ing of­fi­cer?

The EBC chair tries to re­as­sure us by stat­ing that the knowl­edge of whether an of­fi­cer be­longs to a par­ty is nec­es­sary in the in­ter­est of im­par­tial­i­ty, fair­ness, and trans­paren­cy.

How so? Stip­u­la­tions are not ar­gu­ments.